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Published: March 8th 2007
Gone Banana's!!!
Stay tuned for Luke's interesting bicycle adventures...Monday March 5, 2007
It has just past midday here at the FDNC Natomdome village vocational school. In this blog entry I hope to give a more detailed account of the whole trip so far as the first blog was a little brief, additionally I will document were your money has been spent so far.
* all observations and comments made in this blog are my own un-informed opinion, therefore many may be inaccurate and I hope I don’t cause any offence.
Adelaide-Singapore-Nairobi
The first leg of the journey was relatively un-eventful arriving in ‘little India’ Singapore as planned. This was the first time that I have visited Singapore outside of the Airport and I have to admit that it was an enjoyable 24hours. I had a pre-conception of Singapore as be a very boring and orderly place, although Saigon it is not it was still worth spending a day or two to check it out. Little India was rather interesting, from what I could gather this region was rather different to the rest of Singapore, as the name suggest it was rather like a ‘little India’ (not that I have been to India). The same things which
Derek, David and me
Two familiar faces in the village. They were keeping me company while i waited for Luke, as i locked myself out of the hut! make Singapore a little dull, such as its overall feeling of sensibility also make it quite enjoyable and easy to travel in. Everything is clean, the trains are reliable new and cheap, the food was good value etc. Basically it exceeded my expectations and was an enjoyable experience.
The same cannot be said for the 7 hour wait in the Singapore Airport for our Singapore-Doha flight, lets just say we made an slight error of judgment and spent about four hours weighting to check in. But as they say ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ and our silver lining was a very unexpected ‘upgrade’ to business class for the Singapore-Doha leg of our journey. When the chap processing our ticket took us aside we initially thought it must be another STA travel blunder before joking about “maybe they are putting us in business class”, well what would you know, needless to say the flight was most enjoyable, the wine divine and the ‘skybeds’ a treat.
The 4 hours in Doha was spent predominately playing checkers. My brief observations were that the terminal was not as nice as I expected considering how new it was, both the airport and Qatar airlines are growing at a staggering rate and from what I could see Qatar is very much a dessert as expected.
The flight to Nairobi was adequate one additional meal would not have gone astray and unfortunately there ware no personal in-flight entertainment units on our plan (life is pretty tuff sometimes). As odds would have it we were sitting next to a young chap from Brisbane who was flying to Nairobi to do a big safari/tour thing finishing in Cape Town, we all spent the last two hours of the flight making each other a little nervous about how dangerous Nairobi is.
Not having organized a Kenyan Visa before arrival we were pleasantly surprised that it took us less time to get through immigration than those who already had a visa and the chap behind the counter threw in an extra two months for nothing, couldn’t see that happening in Australia.
Well Nairobi…….
Nairobi was very safe, that is as long as you stayed within about a five block radius were there were security guards every five meters (seriously). Personally we had no problems but the reputation and heavy security presence left you feeling a little un-easy needless to say it was not the most relaxing two days. To me Nairobi seemed like an interesting place, that is it had lots of tall building’s but none that appeared to have been built after 1977. From my observations it was a city that was traveling in the wrong direction and had been doing so for some time, in many ways it reminded me of my time spent in Russia. Comparing Nairobi to my last overseas trip (Saigon) was interesting, overall I would say that there was more wealth in Nairobi but the contrast of one falling apart and the other growing at a million miles an hour could not have been greater; given a choice I defiantly know which one a would prefer to spend time in (Saigon).
The Safari……
I will get this of my chest straight away, our safari was a little frustrating for many reasons but for me personally I think the most frustrating was the fact that in Kenya you seem to be paying 1st world prices for 3rd world standards, I think I read somewhere that the cost of living in Kenya has risen by 400% over the past five or so years so that could explain it. The Kenyan tourist industry seems in many ways to resemble Nairobi, on a fall from past glory, don’t get me wrong tourism in Kenya is still big business and from what I hear still the countries number one source of revenue. Just an observation but I feel that in many parts of the tourism industry they are trying to squeeze as much as possible out of those who do come to make up for those who no longer venture to Kenya. It was very hard to have a genuine conversation with any Kenyan’s that we met as they were all after there piece of the tourist dollar, one cannot blame Kenyan’s from trying to make a go of it in difficult times but it gets very testing with everyone continually trying to rip you off and then making you feel guilty for not throwing out money, as that it what is expected of western tourists.
Anyway enough winging, the ‘core business’ of the safari, seeing the animals that is, was everything which we expected and more. Lions, elephants, leopards etc etc, I believe you saw some of the photo’s on our last blog entry.
Uganda, Natomdome, FDNC etc……..
One week exactly, that is how long we have been in Uganda for, it seems longer but not in a bad way, as many of you may have noticed when everything is new your experiences seem to last for longer (hope that made sense). Overall the first week has gone well. We got of too a bit of a shaky start though, our hut that we are staying in was only finished the day before we arrived and for our first night it was leaking quite a bit, fortunately the roof has since fixed itself and we cannot complain.
I was a little unsure of what I was too be doing prior to my arrival, but it seems to be working out well. To be honest I was hoping not to get myself in too deep, as in a lot of work and being very busy, but of course did want something to keep me busy when not supporting Celeste and helping out with the health clinic. That something appears to have came in the form of establishing a youth soccer competition. In Uganda it is compulsory to attend primary school which is totally government funded but the I don’t believe it is quite the same deal for secondary school. As a result many young people finish school at age 12 and then find themselves rather idle with little work to keep them busy. Hopefully the soccer competition can give a little extra excitement and purpose to the lives of those who cannot attend secondary school and do not have work.
Mbale the largest regional centre which is about 8km from Natdondome has a small selection of the creature comforts that you sometimes need when you are so far from home and all that is familiar. There are quite a few ‘supermarkets which sell a small selection of western food, maybe two ‘good’ eating establishments and a few nice hotels, the most prestigous of which we visited last Sunday to use there pool. The Mbale resort hotel is quite the oasis only $3 to us the pool, lovely hot showers, a gym, cheap beer, cable television, yeah I think we will be spending allot of our days off by the pool. So basically I think that Mbale has just enough familiarity to keep us sane for the next few months.
The Health Clinic………..
I have been busy working mon-fri in the clinic, and the patient load increasing as word is spreading there is a mzungu in town! I have so much to write, so I shall do a separate page in the near future…
Business……………..
I am sure many of you are by now quite keen to find out how your generous donations are being spent, please refer to the below table to find out were the money has gone so far;
Transport of 125kg of freight (Medical equipment, 6000 condoms, school supplies, children’s clothes, bed nets and some sporting equipment)
From Australia: $1250
Ugandan taxes, charges and transport $300
* I think overall the transporting of donations was probably more work and money than what it was worth (I will tell you about Ugandan airport drama’s next entry) but at the end of the day the net value of the goods would have exceeded $1550 so in that respect was worthwhile.
Medical equipment: $150 (for more detail see heading ‘health clinic’)
Bicycle: $100, can be used as a business (taxi) or for general transportation of people and goods. (It is rather amazing what can be tied to the back of a bicycle)
I think that will do for this entry but do stay tuned and I am sure to be in touch once more within the next fortnight.
Ciao.
Luke and Celeste.
P.S.- thank you for all who are leaving messages on our blog we are enjoying hearing from you all a great deal and please feel free to ask any questions you may have.
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Karen Lewis
non-member comment
Good to hear your tales thus far!
Hi Molly and Luke, Good to hear your tales thus far. You appear to be settling in well. Now that you have arrived I will send that parcel of clothing for you to the address you gave me and hopefully if it arrives ok will leave it to you to pass on to some deserving kiddies. Much love Karen and Steve xxxx